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Issue #1/2009
LED screens and signs on transport
Daily hundreds of millions of people spend a lot of time in transit. This flow will never dry up, not even the financial crisis will stop them from commuting. Naturally, advertisers target commuters and invent more ingenious high-tech advertising methods every month.
LED information board on surface transport
The latest hit – LED panels on transport. Our magazine is only interested in LED-based technology and its derivatives. First, LED panels substituted traditional route numbers on city trams, trolley-busses and busses. Later LED signs appeared inside the coaches as monochromatic running letters mostly copying the audio announcements about coming stops and providing at times commercial adverting.
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| LED information board on buses (Photo credit: Screens.ru) |
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| LED information board for city transport (Animation credit: Vis-A-Vis Service) |
Airports and railway
About the same time it was decided to replace traditional information boards in airports and rail terminals with LED boards. At times, these purely informational boards are hanging side by side with full-color LED video screens that display on-line TV, useful information and images for travelers and advertising.
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| LED information board in Narita Tokyo airport (Photo credit: Screens.ru) |
Arrival-and-departure information combined with the video LED screen. Such combination may be seen in many Japanese airports (Photo credit: Screens.ru) |
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| Informational LED board in the airport arrival lounge (Photo credit: Screens.ru) |
LED screen and informational board in Beijing railway (Photo credit: Daktronics.com) |
Daktronics was contracted to produce an LED screen for the Beijing South Station. The screen is surrounded by an informational display. The whole screen has the 480x4280 resolution with 6 mm pitch. The total size of the screen is 2.74 x 7.62 meters.
LED signs on the sides of city busses
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| LED signs on the sides of city busses (Photo credit: Litelogic) |
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Litelogic company specializes on digital outdoor advertising developed a network technology of high-resolution LED signs and successfully cooperates with the well-known company Titan Worldwide in expanding the experiment to new regions. The LED signs installed on the bus in Chicago is indeed a full “King-sized” panel 30″ x 144″ 12 mm pitch LED panel manufactured by Litelogic.
A number of city busses in Chicago and New-York equipped with LED signs is close to a hundred but the number is continuously growing. We should say, that there are many variations of placing LED signs on busses. Apart from commercial advertising these LED signs display useful city information about emergencies, road repairs, accidents, etc. Today, GPS allows operators of the LED sign network on transport to differentiate information and supply different data for different target audiences as the buss rolls along its route.
Such approach makes advertising more effective and allows easy monitoring of outdoor advertising. Mass-media already called this program a “revolutionary” approach. However, analysts also point to deficiencies and argue that such transit advertising should not be implemented everywhere yet.
LED information board on the taxi
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| LED information board on the taxi | |
LED screens in the tunnels
Here's an unusual advertising LED screen from the company SideTrack (Canada) that’s installed in the tunnel leading to the London’s Heathrow airport. It consists of 360 vertical LED strips located at a distance from each other over the 450 meters of the tunnel. While the train moves passengers can see animation advertising clips on this unusual LED screen due to the inertia of the human eye.
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| LED strips in the tunnel (Photo credit: Signweb.com) |
An example of advertising clip on the LED screen (Photo credit: Signweb.com) |
Water transport
Who could think of an LED screen in the middle of the ocean! Now, Panasonic installed video LED screens on the ships of the well-known company Princess Cruise.
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| An LED screen on a ship (Photo credit: Panasonic.com) |
An LED screen on a pleasure boat in Shanghai (Photo credit: Screens.ru) |
Even more surprising is the application for LED screen that was invented by some Chinese advertisers. They placed the LED screen on pleasure boat and sail along the crowded city embankments. The safety requirements to LED screens operating in such conditions are much higher than usual: they should be resistant to humidity, salt corrosion, high winds, and vibration.
LED screens in the air
At the end, a couple of images about LED screens in the air. Strictly speaking, these screens are not the same as LED screens used on mass-transit. However, they indicate the tendency for LEDs to conquer the three elements: earth, water and air. Wherever we go, LED panels follow. It’s a good business, after all!
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| A dirigible balloon with an LED screen (Photo credit: Clearly-av.co.uk) |
The balloon with LED screen (Photo credit: Gizmowatch.com) |
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